A Kentucky Cardinal

by James Lane Allen

Work from "Kentucky's first important novelist" and an attempt to capture the spirit, and dialects, of his native Kentucky in the United States during the Civil War and post Civil War reconstruction era.

Genres: Fiction, Romance

Paperback

First published June 1, 1968

About the author

James Lane Allen was an American novelist and short story writer whose work often depicted the culture and dialects of his native Kentucky. His work is characteristic of the late-19th century local color era, when writers sought to capture the vernacular in their fiction. Allen has been described as "Kentucky's first important novelist."

Reviews

[Amit Mishra · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a pretty well written short novel. That lay emphasis on nature and the protection of nature.

[Nicola Olsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has been a long time since I have read a book that doesn't spell everything out for you. This story is so well written! I had so much fun with the characters. No one had super powers or supreme wisdom, they were very average people who managed to work through a bit of mess to some true happiness. Wonderful!

[VeeDawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe I forgot to add this one earlier. It has been a favorite of mine for years!

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book for Christmas. I really enjoy old books, well actually I love books of any age, but to hold and read one this old is so cool. Just imagine the history that this book has seen. The author began writing it on New Year’s Day 1850. My copy was published in 1908. The author was a nature enthusiast and loved birds especially. My favorite line is on page 78 and expresses something I have always wondered,”Nature alone has the making of her creatures; why doesn’t she make them comfortable?” I enjoyed the book almost to the end but found the ending very sad. But it was an enjoyable read because of the age and the difference in the way we express ourselves compared to over a hundred years ago.

[Candi Olsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book difficult to rate. I would give writing style a 5, LOVED it! The story I would give 4 stars most of the way through. Then about 3/4 of the way through I enjoyed the story itself less and less. I thought the ending chapter or two only earned 2 stars which is so sad compared to how it started and the beautiful writing.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Lane Allen was once considered to be one of Kentucky's great writers, but, with good reason, he is not read much today, and memory of this book in his home state is mostly preserved in the selection of the cardinal as Kentucky's state bird and as the moniker for University of Louisville athletic teams. I grew up in Lexington and knew the author as a child only on account of the eponymous Lane Allen Road that my father used in his curious circuitous route to the airport. So I got excited when my wife found this book and its sequel "Aftermath" as a moldy two volume set on the shelves of Bart's Books in Ojai.

But, short as this book is, it was much longer than it needed to be and was a slog to get through because the writing style is beyond pedestrian. It has all of the earmarks of awkward 19th century writing, with its overblown and often ponderous vocabulary and syntax and lame references to the Bible and to Greek and Latin classics. Sometimes there was charm in Adam's observations of the birds, his garden and the changing of the Kentucky seasons, but I could not develop much interest in the world of a prosperous bachelor living a life of ease supported by his nearly anonymous enslaved servants on the outskirts of antebellum Lexington. Still, I enjoyed the central conceit of the argument over a cardinal that both separates and unites Adam and Georgiana, but the core of the cardinal story plays out in a few pages, so you have to suffer through a hundred largely unnecessary pages to get to it. As a ten page story in the hands of a master writer like Chekhov, the story, characters and setting could have made a work of genius, but Mr. Lane Allen was not up to the task.

[Michael Manafette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the juxtaposition the author creates between humans and birds. At one point the narrator puts on a very colorful outfit to try to attract his love interest. I thought his version of God and its relationship to the human environment is interesting. "But we have but one set of feathers to last us...which we are told to keep spotless through all our lives in a dirty world...If then the hand of the unseen Fancier is stretched forth to draw us in, how can he possibly smite any one of us...because we came back black and blue with bruises and besmudged and bedraggled past all recognition." "...like a flock of pigeons that were once turned loose snow-white from the sky, and made to descend and fight one another and fight everything else for a poor living amid soot and mire."

[Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A generally-lovely novella, though I think the last couple chapters are flat. Kentucky Cardinal begins in the transcendentalist vein of Thoreau but more flowery - literally and figuratively. Humans are birds, birds are humans, and the slow procession of the seasons governs the novella and narrator. This gradually shifts as the narrator moves into the summer of his own life, with the emergence of a love plot and a narrative transition into romance.

[ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

God what a simp

[Jennifer Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick read

Easy on the eyes. I love the gentle read with likeable charters. Not too thick not too thin. Just right for just a before lights out for night

[Christopher Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like it...